Monday, October 7, 2013

Performance Indicators for the T&T Police Service & Judiciary

The police can't be everywhere at once therefore they can't stop all criminal activity. The fact remains that when you require an immediate police response the police will be minutes / hours away at best. Once this premise is accepted the primary way the police / the state can safeguard the public safety is by arresting and prosecuting perpetrators of reported crime, thereby limiting the criminal to a single violation rather than repeated violations of the public. This core responsibility of the police service and judiciary has been largely discarded in T&T and instead the propagated message is centred around murder and violent crime statistics.On the contrary, the conviction rate compared to the number of crimes perpetrated should be the ultimate barometer for the effectiveness of the police service and judiciary. Instead, the public is distracted only by quoted murder / crime statistics; this lets the police and the state off the hook since tangible deliverables of KPIs are note targeted. Quoting merely increasing, yet oscillating crime statistics gives the public the impression that surges in crime are exogenous, rather than as a direct result of state failure. In fact, in the few instances conviction rates were quoted they were abysmal at approximately 10%. Therefore a criminal committing a crime 9 times out of 10 would escape conviction. No wonder crime continues unabated. Until this is addressed expect increased violations of persons and property in T&T by the criminal element.The state may be too busy micro managing 31 other less important and irrelevant ministries to focus on what should be their primary role of ensuring to the best of their ability there is no unwarranted violence and aggression against citizens.

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About the Editor

The editor is a Kingdom believer, loving husband, father and business owner.

He attained a Bachelors in Finance and Economics at the University of Western Ontario in Canada.

After graduating he worked in the Canadian securities industry while residing in Burlington, Ontario, and has completed the Canadian Securities Course –the Canadian investment course that qualifies graduates to sell and deal in financial products in Canada.

He currently resides in Trinidad and makes his living in the T&T Energy Sector. Contact The Editor